THE BURNING GIRL by Mark Billingham

FROM THE PUBLISHER:

Some fires never go out ... Tom Thorne's got plenty on his plate when he agrees to help out ex-DCI Carol Chamberlain rake through the ashes of an old case that has come back to haunt her. Schoolgirl Jessica Clarke was lit on fire twenty years ago. Now, Gordon Rooker, the man Chamberlain put away for the crime, is up for parole, and it seems there's a copycat on the prowl. Or perhaps it's someone trying to right a serious wrong: Jessica Clarke was the victim of mistaken identity. The intended target was the daughter of a gangland boss, a woman who would grow up to marry the current leader, Billy Ryan ... Thorne quickly identifies a tenuous link between the two crimes, and past and present fuse together to form a new, horrifying riddle. One that involves more killings, violence, greed, and a murderous family with no values -- except gain at any price. When an X is carved into his front door, Tom Thorne realizes that fires, once thought to be out, continue to burn.

RATING:

I've been a huge fan of Mark Billingham's Tom Thorne series since his debut with SLEEPYHEAD so obviously I looked forward to reading the fourth installment with THE BURNING GIRL but unfortunately felt that this entry falls considerably short of the prior three. Billingham still succeeds in writing a wonderfully complex lead character as well as multi-dimensional secondary ones (Carol Chamberlain especially) but the main plot involving two gandland mafia families at war is predictable throughout -- the intertwining story involving "The Burning Girl" is a bit better but as a whole, the story lacks the intense edginess and plain creepiness that Billingham's other novels displayed so well. All in all, a disappointment but will hope for the best with LIFELESS, Billingham's next book.